Josh Crouch has successfully onboarded with ServiceTitan’s cloud-based software with two different companies. Is he a glutton for punishment? No, he just knows a good thing when he sees it, and is a big fan of the software program’s reporting functions.
And while no one is fond of an onboarding process in general, Crouch is living proof you can even pull it off during the busy summer season.
He’s director of sales, marketing and business development at Professional Services in Port Washington, Wis. The company is looking to produce $2 million in revenue in 2020, and recently had its first $300,000 month.
That makes Crouch eager to take on the task of software onboarding for a second time, busy season or not.
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Summer onboarding
For his second “rodeo” with ServiceTitan, Crouch was tasked with moving Professional Services off a competing software during the months of May and June. His main priority was getting the techs functional and the pricebook loaded.
“We had an Excel pricebook that we moved over, and it needed some cleanup,” Crouch says. “ServiceTitan was super quick and always willing to jump in and answer questions. That was a really good experience.”
The mobile side of the software is very user-friendly, he says, which helped techs get up to speed quickly as the busy summer season kicked in.
“If a tech has ever used an app on their phone, everything’s pretty easy,” Crouch says. “We had them do the training videos. I don't think they all finished all of them, but they at least looked at them, and they watched the essential ones.”
He admits that a tech who is used to doing handwritten tickets will be challenged—but all of his team managed to get up to speed on finding things in the pricebook, which Crouch deems one of the harder facets to master.
After the techs were up to speed, and incoming business was still rocking and rolling, Crouch focused on the office implementation. He was the person spearheading all processes.
“Having one person dedicated to setting this all up is a major key to success,” he says. “Give this job to one person and let it be their focus. If you try to do it with multiple people—whether it’s the busy season or not—you’re going to slow down the progress.”
An office manager is the perfect point person for onboarding, Crouch says.
“I know sometimes smaller companies might have a husband-and-wife setup,” he adds. “Whoever’s not in the field and has to handle the field employees would be my recommendation.”
Crouch believes the time to make this kind of switch is when a company is growing.
“It's better to do it early, before you have years of data,” he says. “Then, all of a sudden you have to try to move it all over and if it doesn’t sync well that can be an issue.”
His last piece of seasonal onboarding advice: “Don’t use summer as an excuse to push this process off.”
Benefits of ServiceTitan
Any company that’s in growth mode needs to be using ServiceTitan, Crouch says, especially for the reporting functions.
“ServiceTitan reporting really lets you see the numbers,” he says. “We’re starting to dive into that stuff deeper, but really know our revenue numbers better now. We can actually have real conversations about numbers, and job types, and dispatching correctly.”
Crouch describes the reporting functions on his old software as, “Godawful. Really bad. I couldn’t make sense of our technicians’ numbers.”
ServiceTitan’s open-platform system is another benefit in Crouch’s eyes.
“I like that when a technician is in a job, I can actually go in there and do something,” he says. “(The old software) puts a lock on it from the office side. You can't do anything on that job. You can't add notes. You can't help them. If a tech can’t figure out an invoice or find something, you can't add it for them.”
That’s a pain, he says.
“I don’t know how many times these guys are on a job and I go in there looking for something,” Crouch says. “ServiceTitan is open-platform. I can easily get in there and not mess with anything they’re doing. The audit trail is nice, too. You can always see who’s updating notes, who did what, and pinpoint it.”
Crouch says he’s getting up to speed on using ServiceTitan Marketing Pro to interface with customers.
“I have used it for follow-ups, because I’m currently CSR dispatch,” he says. “I can see a lot of use for emailing. Someone sets up an estimate, and an email automatically goes out to the customer. That starts the value proposition, and they get to know and like and trust us before we ever get onsite.”
Marketing Pro has also been good for review requests.
“We have pulseM,” Crouch says. “It sends out the initial request, but then Marketing Pro sends a follow-up a day later. Then two days after that, we'll send one more. Our number of reviews has gone up quite a bit over the last year.”
At last count in mid-July: 602 reviews.
That leads to business success—no matter what season you’re in.
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive HVAC business software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and achieve growth. Our award-winning, cloud-based platform is trusted by more than 100,000+ contractors across the country.
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